The following was originally posted to the Something Awful forums.
Each panel in a comic represents a length of time passing. In isolation, a single square-shaped panel with one focal point lasts some unit of time in our minds, which I will call a beat. Adding other focal points adds more beats, as does adding dialog – the more dialog, the longer the beat. Since our mind takes in a speech balloon as one unit of time, splitting dialog into more than one separate balloon lengthens the time we perceive as passing – often necessary because if a character’s balloon is a huge wall of text it seems overwhelming, like they’re rattling all that off without moving or pausing. Even so, sometimes splitting balloons isn’t enough to stop a wall of text from being dumb.
Um, so he’s just frozen there with his hand in that position the entire time he’s saying all that? Well OK.
Additionally, in comics panels that are long horizontally with relation to the width of the page are seen as lasting a greater period of time, so panels that stretch across the entire width of the page are seen as lasting the greatest amount of time. These long horizontal panels function in a similar way to a horizontal panning shot in cinema.
Panels that are very long vertically (stretching across 2/3rds or more of the height of the page) can also be seen as depicting a longer period of time than surrounding panels, but the effect is weaker and there is greater risk of confusing the reader because it can often be read that whatever is happening in the vertical panel continues to happen as the stuff in the panels to the right or left of it is happening. A long thin vertical panel is most often used to provide us a full-body shot of a character so we can admire their awesome body or costume or whatever and it’s meant to function in a similar way to a vertical pan in cinema.
It’s best used when it’s safe to assume whatever is happening in the vertical panel continues to happen during the horizontal panels that sit next to it. I personally am not a big fan because usually once you get below the waist (heh) the design isn’t that interesting and the reader’s eyes will wander away, and I’ve seen it used way too many times right next to panels where the featured character then starts doing something, which makes their vertical panel have a weird overlay effect, like I’m watching a flashback or something (in fact I’ve seen vertical panels used deliberately to take sections “out of time.”)
Probably safe to assume here that 17 continues to stand around while Piccolo clenches his fists n’ stuff.
A panel that has several focal points, especially one in which the artist has included “pointers” to force your eye to sweep in a zig-zag pattern across it, is also meant to depict a longer duration of time, and works similarly to a sequence shot in film. In a comic panel, every direction change in the sweep of your eye adds more time to the duration of the shot. This technique is generally suitable for establishing shots meant to show a chaotic scene and should be used sparingly – it’s often not easy to tell at a first glance what the reader should focus on next after absorbing each individual focal point, so if the artist relies on this too much, the reader will feel exhausted and just start skimming.
In summary, to lengthen the period of time a panel is perceived to depict:
-
Add more simultaneous events (focal points, to make the panel the equivalent of a panning shot in cinema)
-
Add speech balloons
-
Make the panel long and thin, particularly on the horizontal axis
-
Force the reader’s eye to zig-zag across the panel (not recommended for regular use)
So a panel like this is one that we would perceive as depicting a comparatively long stretch of time:
Note that it is one page width long, has three disparate elements, and also includes speech bubbles. So as we read from the right edge to the left, we read the huffing and puffing of Roshi, see Roshi, read his next huffing and puffing, see that Krillin is jogging, also huffing and puffing, Goku is jogging, yes, huffing and puffing, and then we see background elements, as if we are stationary observers and these three characters have run past us – and at the moment we observe the palm tree, they are still running (audibly so, too, since Goku’s last huff/puff trails behind him slightly.)
Let’s look at the beginning of Chapter 30, the part I skipped before.
-
We have a large establishing shot of Kame house. We absorb the house and the tree, then see the crowing rooster – we’re meant to linger here.
-
Then we get a small panel with the ringing alarm clock and another small panel of Roshi stopping the alarm clock – both panels each have just one focal point, and both are read as encapsulating very brief moments in time.
-
While the panel with Roshi getting up is about as wide as the above alarm clock panels, it reads as lasting longer. Roshi speaks, we see him sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and the lines in his robe ensure we look all the way down to the bottom of the panel before tracking up and seeing Krillin sleeping. Due to the placement of object in this panel, it functions as a panning shot – imagine a film scene where we see Roshi sit up and rub his eyes, then we widen the shot to include Krillin sleeping, all while Roshi continue to rub his eyes. This panel’s flow basically has a bounce in its trajectory.
-
Roshi gets dressed and talks to Krillin, then in the next panel Krillin says something and Roshi answers, also very brief. These two panels are about as wide as the previous one and include more dialog but they each read as brief and snappy because we sweep across them in a linear way without needing to double back. They do, however, read as taking more time than the alarm clock panels because they have dialog and more elements that take the focus (to be honest I think including the dangling alarm clock in the foreground of the last panel was not a great choice because the leg of the alarm clock very nearly is tangent to Krillin’s sleeve, so it seems like there’s a weird blob there at first because the alarm clock’s silhouette doesn’t stand out. If I were Toriyama I would have shifted it a bit to the left or not included it at all.
-
Roshi walks upstairs. Great use of flow pointers as the lines in this shot all point to Roshi as the focal point. Relatively brief.
-
This panel appears to last some time as our eye sweeps over it in a reverse Z pattern – from Roshi’s thought-bubble dialog to Lunch to Goku to Roshi to Roshi’s 2nd dialog. You could split this into two panels, one showing the sleeping Lunch and Goku and the other showing Roshi’s reaction. This is better though since it tells us where the characters are in relation to each other.
-
The next panel is perfectly square and has one focal point. Pretty brief.
-
The panel of Roshi noticing that Lunch has blond hair is pretty brief because we can sweep over it in one pass.
-
We see Roshi think, then sweat, then think as he continue sweating and contemplating Lunch. This one is fun because we read the first bubble, then look at Roshi, then read the next bubble, then look at Roshi, then we follow Roshis’ gaze to Lunch. It’s the use of the speech balloons that draw out the “time” in this panel – it works because the end of the dialog in the first balloon takes us to Roshi’s head, and the bottom of the dialog in the next balloon also is up close to Roshi’s head (unlike the last panel where the last balloon doesn’t point us back to Roshi.) This helps us imagine Roshi frozen in that position while he plans his next move.
-
This panel invites us to linger because it’s really akin to a panning shot – we focus on Roshi and then our gaze travels down the handle of the broom, taking in the speech bubbles and characters, landing us on Goku’s face getting hit.
-
The top two panels here are both very brief beats, showing one action happening right after another. Pow, Goku wakes up! Pow, Lunch wakes up! Notice how in the first panel of this page, the speech bubble is in the upper left corner. That’s important, because if it weren’t we would read Roshi being afraid first and then see Goku speak, when in fact Roshi is afraid BECAUSE Goku has spoken (to be specific, he’s afraid of what will happen when Lunch awakes.) Even though Roshi is left of Goku, we read his action as happening after Goku’s chronologically. It’s a clever bit of placement that’s easy to miss.
-
This next panel is pretty funny. While we can sweep across it in one linear direction, the fact that the panel spans the entire width of the page makes it seem to last a long period of time. Because it’s a close up shot, we feel intimately close – awkwardly close. We get the feeling that Goku and Lunch stare at each other (Goku with his hand raised) for some length of time not moving, just sizing each other up.
-
The panel of Lunch getting up has us start on Lunch’s face, travel down her leg to Goku, and then up for Goku’s dialog, causing this scene to linger slightly longer than the next panel because we had a bend in the flow. (Notice also that Lunch’s head is the main focal point but all the lines point down to Goku’s head, from the wall, to the sheets, and yes, Lunch’s leg.) The panel of Lunch trying to shoot Goku, while having a similar width, seems faster because we can sweep our eyes across it in a straight line.
-
Lunch shoots Goku and we see Goku react. This is like a panning shot in that we perceive Lunch as continuing to shoot Goku while we focus on his reaction.
-
This panel is pretty brief – just one action
-
The action-line panel of Goku’s kick definitely invites us to linger. It’s as wide as the entire page and builds a huge level of tension with the speedlines and intensity of the pose.
-
The panel wherein Goku’s kick connects is a brief but satisfying resolution to the tension created in the previous panel. It has a single point of focus.
-
The last panel has a longer duration than the previous one because we first see Lunch beat up on the floor and then see Goku; we imagine Lunch is still on the floor twitching or whatever while Goku has his dialog.
And now the grand creepshot, Goku stands watching as Roshi hovers his finger over the prone form of a woman who was beaten unconscious.
My final remark, on the last panel (also an establishing shot) we are meant to perceive Roshi as continuing to speak the dialog that’s in his balloons while Goku and Krillin look on, even if our eyes don’t sweep over them until after reading Roshi’s dialog. That’s the magic of comics – your brain stitches it together for you automatically.
New Leaf: “I’ve never seen Dragonball, why is Kame House in a field and not on the island?”
Covok: “He moved it to train them. It fits in a capsule.”
Alpha3KV: “Animated adaptations can really highlight when characters are talking for too long. I’ve recently seen some of the Marvel Super Heroes cartoons from the 60’s. These were essentially slideshows of comic panels with audible voices in place of speech bubbles and minimal animation. It always looks kind of silly, but never more than when somebody has a monologue. That’s when you can get over half a minute of a static image on screen with only the mouth moving. I remember some old retsupurae featuring a flash animation of a webcomic that pointed out this happening. The current JoJo anime has also occasionally had moments where there’s just a close-up of a character’s face as they monologue while some deadly attack is coming their way.
Of course I would be remiss not to mention Dragonball Z here, the anime being notorious for things taking forever (e.g. the infamous “five minutes” on Namek). As I understand it, much of that is filler and padding that was added because the anime was catching up to the manga too quickly. That’s basically the other side of the same coin. Putting a comic’s events into real time and formatting it for TV slots can result in things being resolved much more efficiently than they were in the source material. The fundamental differences in format mean not everything always translates well from one to the other.”
Agreed. Somewhat lazily using the manga itself as a storyboard often leads to less-than-great adaptations. This may be an area where the American way of handling comic adaptations might be better. Many Justice League and Justice League Unlimited episodes were based on stories from the comics but they were all written specifically for TV, and while I wasn’t its intended audience, the Teen Titans cartoon was enormously successful with kids who would never crack open a superhero book.
Petiso: “This is specially ridiculous in sports anime, where it makes it look like the field is several miles long.
Nice work as always, Xibanya, I never realized plenty of those things, like how the close up of Goku and Lunch helps the reader feel the awkwardness of the situation. It’s a lot of things you know that work but it’s hard to explain why.”
Just to illustrate the power of a long horizontal panel, I took one of the above pages and made a gif that shows one panel at a time. The duration of each frame is proportional to the horizontal width of the panel. Here’s what you get:
Obviously it doesn’t work perfectly like this in comics since so many other factors can influence the perceived time duration of a panel, but it’s a nice way of illustrating the rough principles.
Effort Posts 